The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 341 THE MATERIALISM OF THE BIBLE.

In his enormous works -- Memoires addressees a l'Academie
des Sciences -- de Mirville, carrying out the task of proving
the reality of the devil and showing his abode in every ancient
and modern idol, has collected several hundred pages of "historical
evidence" that in the days of miracle -- Pagan and
Biblical -- the stones walked, spoke, delivered oracles, and even
sung. That finally, "Christ-stone," or Christ-Rock,
"the spiritual Rock" that followed "Israel"
(I Corinth. x. 4) "became a Jupiter lapis,"swallowed by his father Saturn, "under the shape of
a stone."* We will not stop to discuss the evident misuse
and materialization of Biblical metaphors, simply for the sake
of proving the Satanism of idols, though a good deal
might be said** on this subject. But without claiming any such
peripateticism and innate psychic faculties for our stones, we
may collect, in our turn, every available evidence on hand, to
show that (a) had there been no giants to move about
such colossal rocks, there could never have been a Stonehenge,
a Carnac (Brittany) and other such Cyclopean structures; and (b)
were there no such thing as MAGIC, there could never have been
so many witnesses to oracular and speaking stones.

In the Achaica (p. 81) we find Pausanias confessing that,
in beginning his work, he had regarded the Greeks as mighty stupid
"for worshipping stones." But, having reached Arcadia,
he adds: "I have changed my way of thinking." Therefore,
without worshipping stones or stone idols and statues, which is
the same -- a crime Roman Catholics are unwise to reproach Pagans
with, as they do likewise -- one may be allowed to believe in
what so many great philosophers and holy men have believed in,
without deserving to be called an "idiot" by modern
Pausaniases.

The reader is referred to Volume VI. of the Academie
des Inscriptions (Memoires, p. 518, et seq.)if he would study the various properties of flints and pebbles
from the standpoint of Magic and psychic powers. In a
poem on Stones attributed to Orpheus, those stones are
divided into ophites and siderites, "serpent-stones"
and "star-stones." "The 'Ophite'

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Pierres Animees et parlantes., p. 283. Theologie
de la Pierre, 270.

** Saturn is Kronos -- "Time."His swallowing Jupiter lapis may turn out one day
a prophecy. "Peter (Cephas, lapis), is
the stone on which the Church of Rome is built"
we are assured. But Kronos is as sure "to swallow
it" one day, as he has swallowed Jupiter-lapis and
still greater characters.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 342 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

is shaggy, hard, heavy, black, and has the gift of speech;when one prepares to cast it away, it produces a sound
similar to the cry of a child. It is by means of this stone
that Helanos foretold the ruin of Troy, his fatherland . . "
etc. (Falconnet.)

Sanchoniathon and Philo Byblius, in referring to these betyles,
call them "Animated Stones." Photius repeats
what Damascius, Asclepiades, Isidorus and the physician Eusebius
had asserted before him. The latter (Eusebius) never parted with
his ophites, which he carried in his bosom, and received
oracles from them, delivered in a small voice resembling a
low whistling.* Arnobius (a holy man who, "from a Pagan
had become one of the lights of the Church,"Christians tell their readers) confesses he could never meet
on his passage with one of such stones without putting it questions,
"which is answered occasionally in a clear and sharp
small voice."Where is the difference between
the Christian and the Pagan ophites, we ask?

It is also known that the famous stone at Westminster was called
liafail -- "the speaking stone," -- which raised
its voice only to name the king that had to be chosen. Cambry
(Monuments Celtiques)says he saw it when it
still bore the inscription: --**

Finally, Suidas speaks of a certain Heraclius, who could distinguish
at a glance the inanimate stones from those which were endowed
with motion; and Pliny mentions stones which "ran away when
a hand approached them." (See Dictionnaire des Religions
par l'abbe Bertrand; art. on words Heraclius
and Betyles.)

De Mirville -- who seeks to justify the Bible -- inquires very
pertinently, why the monstrous stones of Stonehenge were called
in days of old chior-gaur (from Cor, "dance,"
whence chorea, and gaur, a GIANT), or the dance
of giants? And then he sends the reader to receive his reply from
the Bishop of St. Gildas. But the authors of the Voyage dans
le Comte

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* The same, of course, as the "small voice" heard by
Elijah after the earthquake at the mouth of the cave. (I Kings
xix. 12.)

** The rocking, or Logan, stones bear various names. The Celts
had their clacha-brath, the "Destiny or judgment-stone";
the divining-stone, or "stone of the ordeal"
and the oracle stone; the moving or animated stone of the Phoenicians;
the rumbling stone of the Irish. Brittany has its "pierres
branlantes"at Huelgoat. They are found in
the Old and the New Worlds: in the British Islands, France, Spain,
Italy, Russia, Germany, etc., as in North America.(See
Hodson's "Letters from North America,"
Vol. II., p. 440.) Pliny speaks
of several in Asia (Hist. Nat. Lib. I., c. 96), and Apollonius
Rhodius expatiates on the rocking stones, and says that they are
"stones placed on the apex of a tumulus, and so sensitive
as to be movable by the mind" (Ackerman's
Arth. Index, p. 34), referring no doubt to the ancient priests
who moved such stones by will-power and from a distance.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 343 THE "ROCKING-STONES" IN EUROPE.

de Cornouailles, sur les traces des giants, and of various
learned works on the ruins of Stonehenge,* Carnac and West Hoadley,
give far better and more reliable information upon this particular
subject. In those regions -- true forests of rocks -- immense
monoliths are found, "some weighing over 500,000 kilograms"
(Cambry). These "hinging stones" of Salisbury Plain
are believed to be the remains of a Druidical temple. But the
Druids were historical men and not Cyclopes, nor giants. Who then,
if not giants, could ever raise such masses (especially
those at Carnac and West Hoadley), range them in such symmetrical
order that they should represent the planisphere, and place them
in such wonderful equipoise that they seem to hardly touch the
ground, are set in motion at the slightest touch of the finger,
and would yet resist the efforts of twenty men who should attempt
to displace them.

We say, that most of these stones are the relics of the last Atlanteans.
We shall be answered that all the geologists claim them to be
of a natural origin. That, a rock when "weathering,"
i.e., losing flake after flake of its substance under
influence of weather, assumes this form. That, the "tors"
in West England exhibit curious forms, also produced by this cause.
That, finally, as all scientists consider the "rocking stones
to be of purely natural origin, wind, rain, etc., causing disintegration
of rocks in layers" -- our statement will be justly denied,
especially as "we see this process of rock-modification
in progress around us to-day." Let us examine the case.

But read what Geology has to say, and you will learn that often
these gigantic masses do not even belong to the countries wherein
they are now fixed; that their geological congeners often pertain
to strata unknown in those regions and to be found only far beyond
the seas. Mr. William Tooke (French trans., Sepulture des
Tartares. Arch. VII, p. 222), speculating upon the enormous
blocks of granite which are strewn over Southern Russia and Siberia,
tells the reader that there, where they now rest, there are neither
rocks nor mountains; and that they must have been brought over
"from immense distances and with prodigious efforts."
Charton (Voyageurs Anciens et Modernes, Vol. I., p. 230)
speaks of a specimen of such rock "from Ireland," which
had been submitted to the analysis of an eminent English geologist,
who assigned to it a foreign origin, "most probably African."

This is a strange coincidence, as Irish tradition attributes
the origin of her circular stones to a Sorcerer who brought
them from Africa. De Mirville sees in that sorcerer "an
accursed Hamite." We see in him a

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

** Ham was no more a Titan or Giant than Shem and Japhet. They
are either all Arkite Titans, as Faber shows them, or myths.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 344 THE SECRET DOCTRINE

dark Atlantean, or perhaps even some earlier Lemurian, who had
survived till the birth of the British Islands -- GIANTS
in every and any case.*

"Men," says Cambry, naively, "have nothing to do
with it . . . for never could human power and industry
undertake anything of this kind. Nature alone has accomplished
it all (!!) and Science will demonstrate it some day" (!!)
(p. 88). Nevertheless, it is a human, though gigantic
power, which has accomplished it, and no more "nature"
alone than god or devil.

"Science," having undertaken to demonstrate that even
the mind and Spirit of man are simply the production of blind
forces, is quite capable of accepting the task. It may come
out some fine morning, and seek to prove that nature alone has
marshalled the gigantic rocks of Stonehenge, traced their position
with mathematical precision, given them the form of the Dendera
planisphere and of the signs of the Zodiac, and brought stones
weighing over one million of pounds flying from Africa and Asia
to England and Ireland!

It is true that Cambry recanted later on. "I had believed
for a long time," he says, "that Nature alone could
produce those wonders . . . . but I recant . . . . chance
is unable to create such marvellous combinations . .
. . and those who placed the said rocks in equipoise, are the
same who have raised the moving masses of the pond of Huelgoat,
near Concarneau. . . . ." Dr. John Watson, quoted by the
same author "Antiquites Celtiques," p. 99,
says, when speaking of the moving rocks, or Rocking-Stones
situated on the slope of Golcar (the "Enchanter"): "The
astonishing movement of those masses poised in equilibrium made
the Celts compare them to gods." . . . .

In "Stonehenge" (Flinders Petrie) it is said that "Stonehenge
is built of the stone of the district, a red sandstone, or 'sarsen'
stone, locally called 'grey wethers.' But some of the stones,
especially those which are said to have been devoted to astronomical
purposes, have been brought from a distance, probably the North
of Ireland."

To close, the reflections of a man of Science, in an article upon
the subject published in 1850 in the Revue Archeologique
(p. 473), are worthy of being quoted. Says the paper,
concerning the rocking stones: --

"Every stone is a block whose weight would try the most powerful
machines. There are, in a word, scattered throughout the globe,
masses, before which the word materials seems to remain
inexplicable, at the sight of which imagination is confounded,
and that had to be endowed with a name as colossal as the

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Diodorus Siculus asserts that in the days of Isis, all men were
of a vast stature, who were denominated by the Hellenes Giants.
[Gk chars] "[Oi d'en Aiguptoi muthologousi kata
ten Isidos helikian gegonenai tinas polusomatous]."

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 345 LIVING, SPEAKING, AND MOVING STONES.

things themselves. Besides which, these immense rocking stones,
called sometimes routers -- placed upright on one of
their sides as on a point, their equipoise being so perfect that
the slightest touch is sufficient to set them in motion . . .
betray a most positive knowledge of statics. Reciprocal counter-motion,
surfaces, plane, convex and concave, in turn . . . all this allies
them to Cyclopean monuments, of which it can be said with good
reason, repeating after de La Vega that 'the demons seem to have
worked on them more than men.' "*

For once we agree with our friends and foes, the Roman Catholics,
and ask whether such prodigies of statics and equilibrium, applied
to masses weighing millions of pounds, can be the work of Palaeolithic
savages, of cave-men, taller than the average man in
our century, yet ordinary mortals as we are? It is no use for
our purpose to refer to the various traditions attached
to the rocking-stones. Still, it may be as well to remind the
English reader of Giraldus Cambrensis, who speaks of
such a stone on the Isle of Mona, which returned to its place,
every effort made to keep it elsewhere notwithstanding. At the
time of the conquest of Ireland by Henry II.,
a Count Hugo Cestrensis, desiring to convince himself of the reality
of the fact, tied the Mona stone to a far bigger one and had them
thrown into the sea. On the following morning it was found in
its accustomed place. . . The learned William of Salisbury warrants
the fact by testifying to its presence in the wall of a church
where he had seen it in 1554. . . And this reminds one of what
Pliny said of the stone left by the Argonauts at Cyzicum, which
the Cyzicans had placed in the Prytanea "whence it ran
away several times, which forced them to lead it" (Nat.
Hist., XXXVI., p. 592). . . Here we have immense
stones stated by all antiquity to be "living, moving, speaking
and self-perambulating." They were also capable, it seems,
of making people run away, since they have been called routers
("to put to flight," to rout) and Des Mousseaux
shows them all to be prophetic stones and

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* "It is difficult," writes Creuzer, "not to suspect
in the structures of Tiryns and Mycenae planetary forces supposed
to be moved by celestial powers, analogous to the famous Dactyles."
(Pelasges et Cyclopes). To this day Science
is ignorant on the subject of the Cyclopes. They are supposed
to have built all the so-called "Cyclopean" works whose
erection necessitated several regiments of Giants, and -- they
were only seventy-seven in all (about one hundred, Creuzer thinks).
They are called "Builders," and Occultism calls them
the INITIATORS, who, initiating some Pelasgians, thus laid the
foundation stone of true MASONRY. Herodotus associates the Cyclops
with Perseus "the son of an Assyrian demon" (I. VI.
p. 54). Raoul Rochette found that Palaemonius, the Cyclops,
to whom a sanctuary was raised, "was the Tyrian Hercules."
Anyhow, he was the builder of the sacred columns of Gadir, covered
with mysterious characters to which Apollonius of Tyana was the
only one in his age to possess the key; and with figures which
may still be found on the walls of Ellora, the gigantic ruins
of the temple of Viswakarma, "the builder and artificer of
the Gods."

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 346 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

called mad stones (see his, "Dieu et
les Dieux," p. 587). "The rocking-stone
is accepted in Science. Why did it rock, why was it made to do
so? One must be blind not to see that this motion was one more
means of divination, and that they were called for this very reason
'the stones of truth.' " (de Mirville, "Fetichisme")*

This is history, the Past of prehistoric times, warranting
the same in later ages. The Dracontia, sacred to the moon and
the serpent, were the more ancient "Rocks of Destiny"
of older nations, whose motion, or rocking, was a code
perfectly clear to the initiated priests, who alone had the key
to this ancient reading. Vormius and Olaius Magnus show
that it was according to the orders of the oracle, "whose
voice spoke through the immense rocks raised by the colossal powers
of ancient giants," that the kings of Scandinavia were elected.
"In India and Persia," says Pliny, "it is she (the
Persian Oitzoe) whom the magi had to consult for the election
of their sovereigns" (Nat. Hist., lxxxvii., chap. LIV.);and he describes (in chap. XXXVIII., 1. ii.) a rock
overshadowing Harpasa, in Asia, and placed in such a manner that
"a single finger

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Messrs. Richardson and Barth are said to have been amazed at
finding in the Desert of Sahara the same trilithic and raised
stones they had seen in Asia, Circassia, Etruria, and in all the
North of Europe. Mr. Rivett-Carnac, B.C.S., of
Allahabad, the distinguished Archaeologist, shows the same amazement
in finding the description given by Sir J. Simpson of the cuplike
markings on stones and rocks in England, Scotland, and other Western
countries -- "offering an extraordinary resemblance"
to "the marks on the trap Boulders which encircle the Barrows
near Nagpur" (the city of Snakes). The eminent scholar saw
in this "another and very extraordinary addition to the mass
of evidence. . . that a branch of the nomadic tribes, who swept
at an early date over Europe, penetrated into India also."
We say Lemuria, Atlantis and her giants, and the earliest races
of the Fifth Root-Race had all a hand in these betyles, lithoi,
and "magic" stones in general. The cup marks noticed
by Sir J. Simpson, and the "holes scooped out on the face"
of rocks and monuments found by Mr. Rivett-Carnac "of different
sizes varying from six inches to an inch-and-a-half in diameter,
and in depth from one to one-and-a-half inch . . . . . . generally
arranged in perpendicular lines presenting many permutations in
the number and size and arrangement of the cups" -- are simply
written RECORDS of the oldest races. Whosoever examines
with attention the drawings made of such marks in the "Archaeological
Notes on Ancient Sculpturing on Rocks in Kumaon, India, etc.,"
will find in it the most primitive style of marking or recording;
something of the sort having been adopted by the American inventors
of the Morse code of telegraphic writing, which reminds us of
the Ahgam writing, a combination of long and short strokes, as
Mr. Rivett-Carnac describes it "cut on sandstone." Sweden,
Norway, and Scandinavia are full of such written records,
the Runic characters having followed the cup-marks and long and
short strokes. In "Johannes Magnus' Infolio" one sees
the representation of the demi-god, the giant Starchaterus (Starkad,
the pupil of Kroszharsgrani, the Magician) who holds under each
arm a huge stone covered with Runic characters; and Starkad, according
to Scandinavian legend, went to Ireland and performed marvellous
deeds in the North and South, East and West. (See "Asgard
and the Gods.")

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 347 UNIVERSAL WITNESSES.

can move it, while the weight of the whole body makes it resist."
Why then should not the rocking stones of Ireland, or those of
Brinham, in Yorkshire, have served for the same mode of divination
or oracular communications? The hugest of them are evidently
the relics of the Atlanteans; the smaller ones, such as Brinham
Rocks, with some revolving stones on their summit, are copies
from the more ancient lithoi. Had not the bishops of the middle
ages destroyed all the plans of the Dracontia they could
lay their hands on, Science would know more of these.* As it is,
we know that they were universally used during long prehistoric
ages, and all for the same purposes of prophecy and MAGIC. E.
Biot, a member of the Institute of France, published in his Antiquites
de France, Vol. ix., an article showing the Chatam peramba
(the Field of Death, or ancient burial ground in Malabar),
to be identical with the old tombs at Carnac -- "a prominence
and a central tomb." . . . "Bones are found in them
(the tombs)," he says, "and Mr. Hillwell tells us that
some of these are enormous, the natives (of Malabar) calling the
tombs the dwellings of Rakshasas (giants)." Several stone
circles, "considered the work of the Panch Pandava (five
Pandus), as all such monuments are in India, so numerous in that
country," when opened by the direction of Rajah Vasariddi,
"were found to contain human bones of a very large size."
(T. A. Wise, in "History of Paganism in Caledonia,"
p. 36).

Again, de Mirville is right in his generalization, if
not in his conclusions. As the long cherished theory that the
Dracontia are mostly witnesses to "great natural geological
commotions" (Charlton), and "are the work of Nature"(Cambry) is now exploded, his remarks are very just. "Before
the impossibility of such a theory is asserted, we advise
Science to reflect . . . . and, above all, no longer to class
Titans and Giants among primitive legends: for their
works are there, under our eyes, and those rocking stones will
oscillate on their basis to the end of the world to help them
to see clearer and realise once for all, that one is not altogether
a candidate for Charenton for believing in wonders certified to
by the whole of Antiquity"("Fetichisme,"
p. 288).

It is just what we can never repeat too often, though the voices
of both Occultists and Roman Catholics are raised in the desert.
Nevertheless, no one can fail to see that Science is as inconsistent,
to say the least, in its modern speculations, as was ancient and
mediaeval theology in its interpretations of the so-called
Revelation. Science would have men descend from the pithecoid
ape -- a transformation requiring millions of years -- and yet
fears to make mankind older than 100,000 years! Science teaches
the gradual transformation of species,

[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------

* Charton, the Author of "Voyageurs anciens et modernes,"quoted by de Mirville.

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 348 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

natural selection and evolution from the lowest form to the highest;
from mollusc to fish, from reptile to bird and mammalian. Yet
it refuses to man, who physiologically is only a higher mammal
and animal, such transformation of his external form. But if the
monstrous iguanodon of the Wealden may have been the ancestor
of the diminutive iguana of to-day, why could not the monstrous
man of the Secret Doctrine have become the modern man -- the link
between Animal and Angel? Is there anything more unscientific
in this "theory," than in that of refusing
to man any spiritual immortal Ego, making of him an automaton,
and ranking him, at the same time, as a distinct genus in
the system of Nature? Occult Sciences may be less scientific than
the present exact Sciences, they are withal more logical and consistent
in their teachings. Physical forces, and natural affinities of
atoms may be sufficient as factors to transform a plant into an
animal; but it requires more than a mere interplay between certain
material aggregates and their environment, to call to life a fully
conscious man;even though he were no more indeed
than a ramification between two "poor cousins" of the
Quadrumanous order. Occult Sciences admit with Haeckel that (objective)
life on our globe "is a logical postulate of Scientific natural
history," but add that the rejection of a like Spiritual
involution, from within without, of invisible subjective
Spirit-life -- eternal and a Principle in Nature -- is more illogical,
if possible, than to say that the Universe and all in it has been
gradually built by blind forces inherent in matter, without any
external help.

Suppose an Occultist were to claim that the first grand organ
of a cathedral had come originally into being in the following
manner. First, there was a progressive and gradual elaboration
in Space of an organizable material, which resulted in the production
of a state of matter named organic PROTEIN. Then, under
the influence of incident forces, those states having been thrown
into a phase of unstable equilibrium, they slowly and majestically
evolved into and resulted in new combinations of carved and polished
wood, of brass pins and staples, of leather and ivory, wind-pipes
and bellows. After which, having adapted all its parts into one
harmonious and symmetrical machine, the organ suddenly pealed
forth Mozart's Requiem. This was followed by a Sonata
of Beethoven, etc., ad infinitum;its keys playing
of themselves and the wind blowing into the pipes by its own inherent
force and fancy. . . . . What would Science say to such a theory?
Yet, it is precisely in such wise that the materialistic savants
tell us that the Universe was formed, with its millions of
beings, and man, its spiritual crown.

Whatever may have been the real inner thought of Mr. Herbert Spencer,
when writing on the subject of the gradual transformation of

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 349 IT TAKES A GOD TO BECOME A MAN.

species, what he says in it applies to our doctrine. "Construed
in terms of evolution, every kind of being is conceived as a product
of modifications wrought by insensible gradations on a pre-existing
kind of being." ("Essays on Physiology,"Subj. p. 144.) Then why, in this case, should not historical
man be the product of a modification on a pre-existent and pre-historical
kind of man, even supposing for argument's sake that there is
nothing within him to last longer than, or live independently
of, his physical structure? But this is not so! For, when we are
told that "organic matters are produced in the laboratory
by what we may literally call artificial evolution"(Appendix to "Principles of Biology,"
p. 482), we answer the distinguished English philosopher,
that Alchemists and great adepts have done as much, and, indeed,
far more, before the chemists ever attempted to "build out
of dissociated elements complex combinations." The Homunculi
of Paracelsus are a fact in Alchemy, and will become one
in Chemistry very likely, and then Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein
will have to be regarded as a prophecy. But no chemist, or Alchemist
either, will ever endow such a "Frankenstein's Monster"
with more than animal instinct, unless indeed he does that which
the "Progenitors" are credited with, namely, if he leaves
his own physical body, and incarnates in the "empty form."
But even this would be an artificial, not a natural man,
for our "Progenitors" had, in the course of eternal
evolution, to become gods before they became men.

The above digression, if one, is an attempt at justification before
the few thinking men of the coming century who may read this.
But this accounts also for the reason why the best and most spiritual
men of our present day can no longer be satisfied with either
Science or theology; and why they prefer any such "psychic
craze" to the dogmatic assertions of both, neither of the
two having anything better to offer than blind faith
in their respective infallibility. Universal tradition
is indeed the far safer guide in life. And universal tradition
shows primitive man living for ages together with his Creators
and first instructors -- the Elohim -- in the World's "Garden
of Eden," or "Delight." We shall treat of the Divine
Instructors in Stanza XII.

-------

45. THE FIRST GREAT WATERS CAME. THEY
SWALLOWED THE SEVEN GREAT ISLANDS (a).

-------

46. ALL HOLY SAVED, THE UNHOLY DESTROYED. WITH
THEM MOST OF THE HUGE ANIMALS PRODUCED FROM THE SWEAT OF THE EARTH
(b).

[[Vol. 2, Page]] 350 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.

(a) As this subject -- the fourth great deluge on our
globe in this Round -- is fully treated in the chapters that follow
the last Stanza, to say anything more at present would be mere
repetition. The seven great islands (Dwipas) belonged to the continent
of Atlantis. The secret teachings show that the "Deluge"
overtook the Fourth, giant Race, not on account of their depravity,
or because they had become "black with sin," but simply
because such is the fate of every continent, which -- like everything
else under our Sun -- is born, lives, becomes decrepit, and dies.
This was when the Fifth Race was in its infancy.

(b) Thus the giants perished -- the magicians and the
sorcerers, adds the fancy of popular tradition, but "all
holy saved," and alone the "unholy were destroyed."
This was due, however, as much to the prevision of the
"holy" ones, who had not lost the use of their "third
eye," as to Karma and natural law. Speaking of the subsequent
race (our Fifth Humanity), the commentary says: --

"Alone the handful of those Elect, whose divine instructors
had gone to inhabit that Sacred Island -- 'from whence
the last Saviour will come' -- now kept mankind from
becoming one-half the exterminator of the other [as mankind
does now -- H.P.B.]. It (mankind) became
divided. Two-thirds of it were ruled by Dynasties of lower, material
Spirits of the earth, who took possession of the easily accessible
bodies; one-third remained faithful, and joined with
the nascent Fifth Race -- the divine Incarnates. When the Poles
moved (for the fourth time) this did not affect those
who were protected, and who had separated from the Fourth Race.
Like the Lemurians -- alone the ungodly Atlanteans perished, and
'were seen no more . . . . ."